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Sunday, February 13, 2011

Use a better DNS Resolution Service

You probably are still using your ISP's DNS resolution service, which usually is not that bad, but it can be better. Much better.

DNS (Domain Name System) is like the phone address book for the Interwebs, translating human-friendly computer hostnames into IP addresses. For example, a domain name such as www.example.com translates to the addresses 192.0.32.10 (IPv4) and 2620:0:2d0:200::10 (IPv6).

Sometimes our ISP's DNS resolution service may be overwhelmed by the query requests it gets, so using a third party resolution service provider would be a great alternative.

Here are my favorite alternative DNS resolution services:
The benefits of using these are: a faster web browsing experience, and improved security. And it's easy to make use of these. Just change your DNS Servers to the service you want to use.

For Apple Airport Extreme routers:
  • Launch Airport Utility
  • Select your AirPort from the list, then click Manual Setup
  • Enter your AirPort password
  • Click on the TCP/IP Section within the Internet Tab
  • Type in (DynDNS/GoogleDNS/OpenDNS) addresses in DNS servers fields
  • Click Update button
For Linksys routers:
  • Visit the router's IP address in a new browser window
  • Enter the Network password
  • Type in (DynDNS/GoogleDNS/OpenDNS) addresses in Static DNS fields
  • Click Save Settings button
Happy surfing! :)